5 companies to test mobile coupons at grocery chain

Five companies are teaming up with grocery retailer The Kroger Co. to revive coupon redemption by rolling out mobile coupons. The Procter & Gamble Co., The Clorox Co., Del Monte Corp., Kimberly-Clark Corp. and General Mills Inc. will begin a four-month test sometime this spring to determine how consumers will react to using wireless coupons.

Users will download a mobile-marketing application from San Jose-based Cellfire Inc. to their cell phones, enabling coupons from the companies to be stored directly on their wireless devices.

The companies want to reach consumers in the 25-year-old-to-34-year-old age range, because this group includes young families who might need baby supplies, home-cleaning and household products, but who also don't use traditional paper coupons.

"The key objective for this test is to find out who are the people who actually would use a mobile for [these types of] transactions," said Tai Doong, director of digital marketing at Del Monte Foods. Doong declined to discuss how much the program would cost Del Monte.

While in a Kroger store, shoppers can use their phones as virtual shopping lists. If a shopper finds a coupon he wants to use, he selects it from his cell phone and the discount information is sent to Kroger's computer system, which identifies the shopper by his loyalty-card number. The discount is then applied when the shopper presents the loyalty card at checkout. Once the coupon is used or expires, it is automatically deleted from the consumer's phone and savings card to prevent overredemption, Cellfire said.

"Mobile/paperless is a winning combination," said Roger Entner, senior vice president of the communications sector at New York-based IAG Research. "You have quite a dedicated group of people who love to get coupons and a bargain, and this makes it pretty straight forward for people to get their coupons."

How Windows XP contributes to global warming

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that no more than 10% of all PCs in use by organizations have power management enabled, and as a result are wasting large amounts of electricity and contributing to greenhouse gases. One major culprit may be Windows XP.

Unlike the Vista operating system, Windows XP does not give system administrators the ability to natively manage power settings on PCs over a network. That may be hindering adoption of the power management functions available in the operating system.

But XP isn't going away anytime soon, and EPA believes that PC power management is an obvious way to save power. It has gone as far as develop a source tool, EZ GPO (Group Policy Objects), and has made it freely available for download. This tool gives system administrators the ability to control power management over the network. It's not needed for Vista, which has these management controls included.

The EPA estimates that a typical 1,000-PC environment can save $40,000 annually by activating power management, which would reduce power use by 400,000 kWh -- enough electricity to light 220 homes annually. From a greenhouse gas perspective, it reduces gas emissions by 300 tons, or the annual emissions of 50 cars.

Laptops linked to detect earthquakes

Many laptops have an accelerometer, a sensor that detects motion and free fall, and that can be used to detect the intensity of earthquakes when a laptop shakes, said Cochran, a seismologist and assistant professor at the department of earth sciences at the University of California, Irvine.

Cochran, along with other scientists, is working on the Quake-Catcher Network (QCN), a project that harnesses seismic data from sensors on Internet-connected laptops in different locations to help capture earthquakes. When the laptop isn't being used, special software on laptops collects sensor data, which along with the laptop's location, is sent over the Internet to an earthquake data repository where the data is analyzed.

Amassing sensor data from thousands of Internet-connected laptops could determine an earthquake's intensity and its exact location, which could be helpful for first responders in relief efforts, Cochran said. It could also help examine quake trends over time at different locations.

The goal is to create a dense seismic network for scientific study and to measure how shaking gets concentrated, Cochran said. The data will also be a resource for first responders to identify the exact location of an earthquake for rapid relief. Currently the network has 300 people signed up, but Cochran hopes to sign up more participants in different locations.

Can Violent Computer / Video Games Produce Violent Behavior?

Research published in the early 2000 demonstrates that playing violent computer / video games can increase a person's aggressive thoughts, feelings, temper, anxiety, obsession and behavior. Studies by psychologists published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology looked at the effects of violent video games in the lab and in real life. This powerful combination of studies presents persuasive evidence that violent video games do indeed increase aggression in some players.

In the first study the authors surveyed college students concerning their use of computer / video games and their reported aggressive delinquent behaviors in the past. They also measured the personality trait of aggressiveness to see how that related to the other variables. Students who had played more aggressive video games had also engaged in more aggressive delinquent behavior. Trait aggressiveness made this relationship even stronger. The students who spent the most total time playing video games had the lowest academic grades in college.

The second study by the authors looked at the effects of actual video game violence. Subjects were college students who played either a violent video game or a non-violent game. These games had been chosen in a pilot study because they differed only in the degree of violence in the game and not on the amount of physiological arousal that they produced. Following video game play the students took some tests and participated in a "Competitive reaction time task" where they were told that they were playing against another student. They were told that they could blast the other student with a noise if they won, and that they could vary the intensity and duration of the blast.

Students in both groups blasted their opponent longer and louder following trials when they had lost and their opponent had just blasted them. Students who had played Wolfenstein 3D blasted their opponent longer and louder on such trials than students who had played Myst. Female students blasted their opponents longer and louder on all trials than male students.

So, in conclusion we always have a question, are such computer/video games safe.

Don't Risk your PC

Recently I read a very interesting article on PC World on risk associated with downloading music, videos on your PC.

Think you're downloading a new music songs, video? Watch out--that file may be stuffed with pop-ups and adware.

PC World has learned that some Windows Media files on peer-to-peer networks such as Kazaa contain code that can spawn a string of pop-up ads and install adware. They look just like regular songs or short videos in Windows Media format, but launch ads instead of media clips. Ads and adware have a new way to get on your computer--through files that appear to be music and video.

The ads in Overpeer's disguised media files may annoy some users. But malicious agents such as hackers and thieves could exploit the DRM loophole to do far worse. Security experts fear that, for example, criminals could load their own modified media files with keystroke loggers or other software for taking over your PC, and thus steal your passwords or other sensitive information.

According to Microsoft's Caulton, "It's possible that someone could modify [an existing audio] file after it's created to point back to their http server." If that's the case, virus and malware writers would gain a powerful platform for launching their attacks.

Writing the code to infect computers is the easy part, according to Johannes B. Ullrich, the chief technical officer for the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center, a computer security watchdog group. "With a lot of these Internet Explorer exploits, the big question is how to get people to visit [the site that executes that code]," he says.

Hacked audio files could provide the perfect incentive. The songs we found gave no warning before launching their string of pop-ups, and before being played they gave little or no indication that they were anything but normal WMA files.

Electronic Number Plate RFID Keeps Tabs On Vehicles

A South African RFID design firm now offers Electronic Number Plate RFID technology. iPico Holdings says this technology is now being used in a pilot project in South America.

The technology is being considered for electronic vehicle licensing, traffic and speed control, cross-border traffic control and other applications. The tags can be read at ordinary vehicle speeds.

This s a passive RFID tag, meaning that it does not need to carry batteries (and therefore will likely last for the life of the vehicle). The tag is attached to the windshield during the manufacturing process; any attempt to alter or remove the tag will damage it.

Science fiction fans may recall the Camden speedster, a car that not only went underwater, but would also alter it's license tag while in motion, in order to fool traffic control devices. Not a bad prediction for 1958, when Methuselah's Children was published .

For another look at how people and objects can be tracked with RFID, see China and India May Issue A Billion RFID-Based ID Cards.

Although this RFID technology is interesting and good but it does have its share of drawbacks and disadvantages.

RFID systems can be easily disrupted. Since RFID systems make use of the electromagnetic spectrum (like WiFi networks or cellphones), they are relatively easy to jam using energy at the right frequency. Although this would only be an inconvenience for consumers in stores (longer waits at the checkout), it could be disastrous in other environments where RFID is increasingly used, like hospitals or in the military in the field.

Also, active RFID tags (those that use a battery to increase the range of the system) can be repeatedly interrogated to wear the battery down, disrupting the system.

Method of Check-In at the Airport

Kiosk check-in, none of us are really stranger to this interesting and time saving method of airline check-in. I travel a lot, business trips and personal trips, I found this method of check-in really handy, especially when I am running late and the flight is about to take off. The way the computer interacts with travelers is really cool, even a computer illiterate can find this method easy and helpful.

The way this technology is growing is unbelievable. There is always an on-going improvement process for this technology. Recently various language options were added at Delta kiosk check-in, which means if you don’t follow or understand English than you have a choice to select your preferred language, that is excellent. The improvement just does not stop there; excess baggage handling, problems with e-tickets and similar things are all done at kiosk check-in, neat method, and now we don’t have to wait in the line for the clerk to say, “Next”. All though this method will not reduce jobs, on the other hand the clerks can help travelers how to use it or if at all they are stuck in the check-in process.

The online checking method is also perfect for people like me who travel on business, if at all you don’t have to check-in anything, just go online 24hrs before departure and check-in that’s it.

But I wish one day they will allow international check-in from home computers using internet. All you do is put in your passport information, and it allows you to print your boarding passes. Something like